Our Panel of Judges for 2026….
Alison brings more than three decades of specialist experience in NHS Pathology, with a distinguished career dedicated to delivering the highest standards of care within adult and paediatric mortuary and autopsy services.
With her blend of operational expertise, regulatory insight, and unwavering commitment to dignity in death care, she now works as an independent mortuary services consultant, advising organisations across the UK and internationally on regulatory compliance, best practice, governance, and service improvement.
Her career includes deployments to major international disaster and victim identification operations, UN forensic missions in Bosnia and Kosovo, repatriation work at RAF Brize Norton, and the recovery and identification of WW1 servicemen from a mass grave in Northern France.
Alison is widely recognised for her professionalism and excellence in the care of the deceased and their families and was awarded an MBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List (2011) for Services to Anatomical Pathology Technology.
John Adams is a fourth-generation funeral director from Shropshire and Director of Perry & Phillips Funeral Directors. He is a past National President of the National Association of Funeral Directors (NAFD) and an active campaigner for greater bereavement awareness within society.
John is the co-author of the book Don’t Tell the Children and hosts the podcast Death: A Changing Industry, which explores grief, funerals, and the changing relationship society has with death and bereavement. His work has received national recognition and focuses on encouraging open conversations around grief.
He has delivered keynote talks internationally, including at the Australian Funeral Directors Association convention in Vietnam, the ACCA conference in Sydney, and the Funeral Directors Association of New Zealand conference in Auckland, where he has spoken about leadership, the future of funerals, and bereavement education.
John is also leading a national campaign in the UK to introduce bereavement awareness into the school curriculum, aiming to help future generations better understand grief and support one another through life’s most difficult moments.
Malcolm was ordained in America and spent 14 years in Fungerume Zaire, formerly “The Belgian Congo”. He was a mission minister with extra duties, undertakers do not exist in a bush station and as minister he was responsible for all funeral arrangements including the service which was usually just the Committal but not all was that simple as there were several religions to arrange for. When he returned to the UK he was attached to the Diocese of Rochester at Rochester Cathedral fostering a very good relationship with all the local funeral directors.
On leaving the church he returned to Scotland and built up two very successful celebrancy services working in Edinburgh, Dundee and most of Central Scotland he was known for carrying out Burial at Sea services.
